A light swoosh of cold air escaped from the crack of the door and hit Marco's face like the winter cold breeze. He could feel Claire shuddered as the temperature dropped inside of the new room. He wet his lips in consternation as the raised floor creaked when he started to ascend the brief staircase. The room was a tad bit colder than the office outside.
Understandably with all the number of electronics in the room, it needed to balance out the heat that was exerted so it did not fry itself from overheating. There were not just computers. Rows of electronic displays, installed with table panels with buttons situated right in front of the glass window were able to control what was beyond them. Not to mention, the server units accompanied were a testament to them in accomplishing the full capacity for execution of the whole operation in the facilities.
From their position, they could see clearly what the carnage inside the operation hall was. The spectacle seen in front of him surpasses his conjecture in the capability of what man can do. Sick and sicko. Marco lost the ability to be articulate, his brain melted and glued at the same time. A grid of human-sized glass cylinders filled up the hall that was half the size half of a basketball court, complete with more screen displays and button panels for manual handling.
What inside of these cylinders was the worst. There were the artifacts from fiendish experimentation in an inhumane kind of way. Deformed bodies of corpses, decayed. The worst was that some of them were new, not in six months spent but a week spent. Rotten bodies embellished with mutilation, every single of them missing a limb. One thing in common, all of them have no head.
"Jesus Christ, this is recent."
"Yes. The Elder said he tested the virus just to be sure. I don't think the villagers that we met just now were taking refuge here. I think they were the test subjects."
"Now seeing this, I don't feel so bad killing that motherfucker."
"Er...Marco. That one still has a head."
"Where?"
"Cylinder No. 23 – TITAN 2-" Claire read the spreadsheet on the table.
"Claire, why this one doesn't have a collar?"
"Oh my God...the living proof."
Right then, the humanoid creature lifted his head from its crouching position seemingly to notice their out-of-place presence. Frozen still in their place, both of them stared in horror.
The sight of the humanoid form gave bone-chilling shivers running through Claire's body. The moment it stood up, its height must have reached more than seven feet; looking as high as the ceiling. Bare naked, with no piece of clothing to hide its modesty. Not a strand of hair was visible, skin was smooth glistening like the surface of a porcelain ceramic. However, his chest was armored, with its own hardened bone that grew out of its flesh and embossed the whole chest like tree roots gripping the earthen soil. Same with its round head, the bone grown intricately covering the fatal point of its head.
The creature studied Marco and rearranged its attention to Claire. Its eyeballs were painted black with no pupil. Blinking once, its eyelids flickering like reptilian. The movement of its head exhibited its confusion. Claire brought herself closer to the window glass. When she placed her hand on the glass, it extended its clawed hand to the glass mirroring what Claire did.
"We must be the first people he sees other than the person who did this to him."
"He human?"
"Yes."
Their exchange was unexpectedly interrupted when the creature slammed both of his hands into the cylinder. Baring his razor teeth as it shrieked. The confined cylinder could not conceal the high-pitched shrieking, resulting in Claire jerking back in startlement. Her palm slammed flat on the instrument's panels, she winched at the sharp pain the result of her hip bones collided the side of the panel desk.
"No. that's definitely not human. That's our queue, Claire. Let's go.", instructed Marco, at the same time pulling her arms to draw her away from the window and beckoning her towards the door.
Claire stepped back, abiding by his proposition. "Okay. But we-"
A pattering sound up the ventilation duct hammered, making the hair on her arms bristle. In an instant, both of them looked up to the white ceiling. Like they knew that they were being watched, the foreboding steps stopped. Marco transposed his body shielding Claire from what was about to happen, his rifle angled upward aiming at the ceiling. She also raised her gun in the direction of the ventilation vent. The TITAN was continuously banging the cylinder with haunting bellows. It felt like it expressing anger at the same time wailing sadness. It scrapped the glass; the sound came as desperate screeching. Soon after, the pattering sound erupted again, steps were short and rapid this time.
"Fuck!", exclaimed Marco having misgiving was about to happen.
Hand on the lever she halfway through the door, the ventilation vent came flying towards them like a freebee being thrown across the room. It caught Marco's raised arm, shielding it away from hitting Claire's uncovered head. Come raining down deformed primates with the size of a young child. The image of the primates that he saw in the video just now comes to mind. It was once caged and now experienced freedom.
But how can they live this long?
Marco released his shots but did not hit the creature. The mutated primates flitted one monitor to another, nimble and agile just like the one he had seen when he faced Orange Shirt and Long Hair. However, this was even worse because its hitbox was small. One of the bullets hit the glass window and a map of cracks became visible on its tempered surface. He emptied what was left in the magazine, moving wildly trying to chase his target. The bullets flew through the surroundings after he successfully gunned down his attacker. The wall, server, and panel board, were all embedded with his bullets.
Next to Marco, concurrently Claire was busy with her own diabolical creature. It straight dropped to the chair in front of her. She thereafter kicked the chair resulting in it twirling and simultaneously it wheeled across the room hitting another chair. Her fusillade of gunshot continued soon after managed to lodge a bullet in the creature's head.
"I thought they were in cages?" Claire sounded off her bafflement.
"Well, we should think through the first moment when we realized the overridden of the locking system. Not just doors were unlocked."
"Yeah, no kiddin'."
Not even a breather after they both finally got their assaulter dead, the ventilation duct pattering sound roared again indicating more was coming. Marco shoved Claire to the door urging her to get moving. Claire tripped the steps of the raised floor, thankfully, Marco tethered her arm to regain her balance.
"Time to go. Come on."
The control room door slammed closed; they were back in the office again. One of the ventilation vents in the office broke and they with more zombified monkeys again. They ravaged all the stuff in the room, like a proper feral monkey. The files were all flying, the file cabinet fell apart and the computer was smashed to the floor.
"Jesus."
The buttstock of his HK-416 jammed his shoulder as the freakish thing made a landing on his rifle. It weight disarrange his aim downward. The decayed smell of monkey became prominent as it was right in front of his face. While knuckled white grasping the pistol grip of the rifle, he released his left hand from holding the barrel, grabbed the ring file on the nearest desk, and bashed his head senselessly. It nosedived to the ground, wailing in pain. He reared to steps back, retaining his aim, and delivered his fatal shots.
Claire moved in reverse and shot one that had been hopping from one working desk to another. When she accidentally got seated in one of the office chairs, she pushed herself away from the moving attacker. The rabid thing moved fast. She missed a few of her shots but was saved by Marco's deadly round. From the other direction, another came to her view. This one was smaller. She gained on her feet, kicked the little thing, and shot it dead.
The same noise from the ventilation vent hammered again. There were too many, and they kept coming.
"Come on, Claire!"
Claire heeded his command and shuffled forward with Marco followed suit covering the rear. The sight of an army of zombified monkeys coming running toward them from the long hallways prompted them to dash the exit door. Running was bad enough, now he had to haul his ass to climb up the staircase. He subdued the pain and heaved air to move at pace with Claire.
The view Claire's ponytail danced as she hopped two steps of the stair at a time, to quicken their ascend. The zombies were hot on their trails. When Marco reached the landing of the staircase, he heard static in his radio followed by communication transmission in cuts. He was hoping that there was no more door that needed to be opened. If they stumbled on another door that locked, they were totally fucked.
All the strength left in her, she tried to muster them together in order to keep herself out of danger. Her inner self was warring; admonishing herself for not listening to Marco sooner, against upholding her tenet in revealing the corrupted societies that were demolishing humankind. So caught up in her thought, she tripped at the last plight of the stairs while yanking the metal door hard. Marco's strong hand slithered around her waist helping her to get on her feet as he saw her clambered to pass through the door.
Their struggle provided the chasers with the upper hand. There was no time to dawdle once she recovered from her fall and simultaneously darted to the open entrance. The dimmed light that came from the already open main door looked promising. He recognized exactly where they at, it was SILVER. The image of Ripley scoping with his battle rifle at GOLD invaded his head. So, he broadcasted their position in a hurry even not knowing who might be listening.
"We coming from SILVER. PID!"
What Marco and Claire encountered next was the last picture they both had imagined. The rest of the soldiers were coordinating to leave the compound. A count of around a dozen of the remaining civilian survivors was just out in the courtyard, waiting for the signal for them to get out through the prison's main entrance. Hoffman was guarding the rear of the column, while Ripley was leading at the front. Was surprised Marco the most was Taggert, who was standing by the grille front door, alive.
Oh, God!
As they stepped outside onto the courtyard, they were both received by audiences, whose faces were in confusion at first later turned to horror-stricken when they saw what trailing behind them both. It was too little too late to even think about closing the central tower door. Marco felt a slight weight on top of his head, a monkey briefly perched on his helmet before slipping through its way out. He denied its next landing interest which had him shoving Claire a little too hard and got her prostrated to the ground. Instead of landing on Claire, the mutated ape plunged to the ground.
Claire scraped both of her elbows during her attempts to be in a position and killed off the maniacal critter. On the other hand, Marco swiftly maneuvered to the left as soon as out the door, while his back was backing the wall. Another zombified monkey leaped through the open door landing in the middle of the courtyard. Another passed the door and another. Within seconds, a handful of zombified monkeys on the courtyard.
FUCK!
The column now was a disarray mess. The survivor scampered to find shelter. A couple of survivors were trying to go out by the main entrance alas could not make it. His teammates' focus shifted to chasing the moving targets. As expected, they encountered difficulties like Marco faced earlier. He spotted Claire push herself to stand against the wall of the tower, mirroring his stance.
"Claire. We need to close the door. I gonna give a covering fire first, then you gonna pulled the door close."
"Understood."
A nod was only Claire got. Marco turned right in front of the open door, one knee on the ground, and started dumping the whole magazine indiscriminately into the interior with burst-mode gunfire.
"Claire. GO!"
Marco drew his rifle up replacing the empty magazine with a fresh fully loaded one while Claire briskly tugged the solid metal door by the latch and made sure it secured in her highest confidence. Once they both pivoted back to the decimation of the remaining crowd, by looking right now all the survivors were infected. Claire saw a fleeting image of Hanna running. She lost sight of her when Claire got caught by one that had turned into a sprinting zombie. The zombie jumped but she shot it midway. Every able person with a firearm was confronted by at least one or maybe several mutated creatures.
One sprung to Hoffman's face and bit off his neck, right at his jugular vein. Blood spewed out from the exposed orifice. It hopped to the nearest victim avoiding the flying bullet, but was shot dead by the round that was sent out by Ripley. Ripley was the most skilled one with his sharpshooting, doomed every head of the zombified monkeys that continued rampaging the scene. Taggert was seen handling the arachnids similar to those that they encountered before. Once Ripley's moving targets were annihilated, he started helping Taggert gunning the arachnids that total of three in counting. They moved fluidly and fast.
Just a several hours, they adapted the fighting plan on how to handle the zombified creatures. Noticing the tactics they worked together, showed how trained and experienced they were. Taggert shots to immobilize while Ripley's shots were intended for death. In Marco's head, they must have picked one or two ideas on how to handle the creature while he and Claire got lost in an undisclosed underground floor and disinterring sensitive information that was not even in their mission briefing dossier.
When he was about to help Claire gun the sprinter zombies that coming toward them, the ground shook accompanied by ominous sounds from behind. Later, he realized that a red crimson giant charged toward him in full throttle. He greeted with mutated Hoffman ready to strike him, only to be blocked by his assault rifle. His primary firearm was propelled across hitting the prisoner wall at the West side corridor. The brute force of the strike pushed him forcibly backward, his backside hit the wall of the tower. Ironically, he flung onto the indentation that was made by the giant zombie that he killed earlier.
His instant reaction when the mutated Hoffman brought his fist to his face was to unholster his Glock-19 and shoot it in the head. Although the bullets lodged into its shoulder and abdomen, the shots swayed the zombie's aim resulting in it punching right above Marco's head. This warped fight was far from victorious, there were no fatal shots therefore prompting him to roll out from being entrapped. His vision was clouded with dust from the damaged façade of the wall, his steps stumbled on the pile of bodies of corpses and dead zombies.
The stench was nauseating and the agonizing pain that he had been ignoring from his wound started to bother him. The dust dissipated, and he saw in the corner of his eyes that Claire was head-kicking one of the sprinter zombies. For a moment, his head was filled was something visceral, he was subdued with dismal. He knew how the end was and specifically, he was the one that had to end it. He had to kill another of his friends. His handgun would not penetrate the meaty humongous creature. He needed to get surgical and concise with his attack. In hand, his Glock-19 was replaced with his M9 Bayonet.
This head-on was much more complex than what he had with mutated Mendoza. Previously, his encounter with Mendoza was rapid, in contrast with mutated Hoffman was ponderous. He even managed to catch a glimpse of the giant zombie; his expression was pained and the look in its eyes was desolate. There was no Hoffman anymore. He convinced himself that his friend was already dead and that what was in front of him was just the demonic apparitions of his dead friend. Convinced its demise could give his friend peace, he made a mad dash to the giant zombie.
He aimed slicing the right thigh, which got the giant zombie to its knees. Static opponent provided him control. He copped his chance to expeditiously slice its exposed stomach. Both of its hands shot down covering the punctured abdomen as the creature came wailing in pain. Then, he swiveled behind the creature and stabbed at the base of his neck. Blood gushed from the perforated surface of the skin when he vigorously pulled the knife out. Its fiery red skin became redder as it bathed with the crimson red of its blood.
In the heat of the moment, even though its flapping hand caught Marco by the throat, he made a fatal stab at the side of his head. Marco sank the reinforced steel weapon deep until the hilt, the tip of the knife pierced through the other side of the giant zombie's head. In the end, its hand around his neck slaked and unceremoniously Marco slumped to the ground with the lifeless zombie collapsed next close to him. Finally, the trepidation that he was choking was dislodged as he breathed relief again.